BOB MINTON: Steve and I would be happy to take any questions
that anyone has.

STEVE HASSAN (off camera): How did you hear about Lisa
McPherson?

BOB MINTON: Well, uh, Lisa--Steve asked about Lisa McPherson.
Anybody who would prefer to write their questions, thatís fine,
or you can stand up and ask them openly if you donít have any
problems with that.

BOB MINTON: Yeah. Um, as you know, the--there have been several
interesting developments in the Lisa McPherson case. One of
the--one of the interesting developments was a couple of months
ago. Um, the local Scientologists in Clearwater gave to us the
form letter that they were asked to complete by Kendrick Moxon.
He was the one coordinating this thing, who is one of their
in-house attorneys who handles, you know, any situation where
they need a shady attorney (laughter). Well, Moxon sent out
this form letter to Scientologists in Clearwater, said to
basically start filling the blanks and sign an affidavit that
as a result of the Lisa McPherson case, these, uh, these local
Scientologists, their businesses were affected, their
relationships with their families was affected, they were being
persecuted as a result of the state of Florida prosecuting the
Church of Scientology about the death of Lisa McPherson. Well,
we got those early on, you know, we know that those things were
also delivered to the prosecutor, we posted them on the
Internet, um, and sure enough, last week, I guess it was, 200
letters were delivered to the prosecutor from Scientologists
who have been damaged severely as a result of the prosecution
over Lisa McPherson. So this was all part of the churchís
attempt to have the state of Florida drop its, uh, charges
against Scientology because of the perse--the religious
persecution that is occurring. Well, weíll see what happens on
that. Nobody knows what will happen on that but I doubt that
theyíre gonna drop their pros--their prosecution of the case.

The--the other thing of significance that happened was that,
uh, Joan Wood, the medical examiner, changed her, um--the
results of the autopsy. There were four possible causes of
death to be listed on that autopsy; they were homicide,
suicide, uh, accidental or unexplained. Those were the only
four possibilities. Previously the, uh, autopsy report had
said, "unexplained". Okay? It was changed to "accidental".
Thatís really all--I mean, the, the, the dehydration question
was somewhat put down on the revised autopsy report, but
the--in terms of the major cause of death, but all of the tests
that have been done subsequently at the request of the Church
of Scientology have shown--have upheld the original medical
results in terms of analyzing the vitreous fluid. And two
subsequent tests were done and both of those were the same or
slightly higher than the original tests. So the dehydration
factor is still very clear there. You know, Scientology trotted
out and called up its medical experts, one of which is a guy
named Cyril Wecht, who was responsible for doing the autopsy on
the alien in Roswell, New Mexico; you might remember he was
also on the O.J. Simpson team. And basically, you can buy any
medical opinion you want in this country if youíre prepared to
pay a high enough price to get Ďem to look at it the way you
want. And sure enough they did this and the medical examiner,
after three years of being bombarded by the Church of
Scientology and its medical experts, did change the, the
opinion. Uh, not significantly, and I donít think itíll affect
the criminal case--it certainly wonít affect the civil case.
So, you know, the civil case with any luck will go to trial
some time this fall. So (reaching over and taking some notes
handed to him) here are some more questions

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Some of those may be for Steve; I didnít know
if he was coming in for the conference or not.

BOB MINTON: Okay. All right.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: [???]

BOB MINTON: Okay. Well, hereís from our, uh, this could be from
our psychology friends given the question, but itís a good
question: "Why is the Lisa McPherson Trust a for-profit
company?" Itís a really good question. The Lisa McPherson Trust
is a for-profit corporation in Florida because we do not wish
to be transparent in terms of who supports our organization,
and thatís the basic reason. You know, we--how, how is it
possible for us to make money? We donít even charge people that
we help get their money back from the Church of Scientology for
it. Itís a pleasure to help them for free. So we donít want our
donor list to be visible to the Church of Scientology. The
Church of Scientology is already trying in court cases to have
us--three times theyíve tried so far--to have us put forward
our financials to the Church of Scientologyís attorneys, and it
hasnít happened and I doubt that it ever will.

STEVE HASSAN: I should just say that in the first printing of
the book regarding [???] its second printing, I err--I made an
error and wrote that it was non-profit. So the next printing it
will be corrected, lest anybody accuse me of deceptively
representing a--or representing the situation. Itís just that
time was before you were incorporating I thought it was gonna
be non-profit [???]

BOB MINTON: Did you actually make a reference to it and say
"non-profit"?

STEVE HASSAN: I did in the footnotes.

BOB MINTON: Oh, I didnít realize that and I actually--

STEVE HASSAN: I did--

BOB MINTON: I didnít realize that--

STEVE HASSAN: Thatís why Iím correcting it publically.

BOB MINTON: Okay--

STEVE HASSAN: My fault, my error.

BOB MINTON: Well, itís my fault, really, because our intentions
were to make it a non-profit corporation but then when we got
into all the intricacies of that and we saw what the filing
requirements were, we decided that a for-profit would be a
better way to keep intelligence away from the Church of
Scientology.

STEVE HASSAN: Okay, there was also a typo in your e-mail
address too. (laughter).

STEVE HASSAN: The Lisa McPherson Trust, or lisamcpherson.org if
you want more information about this case. Thereís a lot more
Bob has to say, he supposed everyone knew about the substance
of her being held for 17 days, that she repeatedly asked to be
let out, wasnít let out, was given all kinds of treatment that
they are saying were religious but in fact they were medical,
when she was brought to the hospital they bypassed several
hospitals. I mean, thereís a lot of factual things here of
great concern.

BOB MINTON: Well, I, I would hope that most people here know
something about the Lisa McPherson case but one, one
interesting aspect of this case is, that Iíve noticed recently,
is the prosecutors and their most significant memorandum to the
court--um, you know, the Church of Scientology has said all
along that this woman was on the, the religious--she was
getting religious services. Well, in the deposition that all
the Scientologists first gave and then secondly changed after
they were given immunity from prosecution that it admitted
lying under oath, it now confirmed that Lisa McPherson was not
under any sort of religious treatment of any kind. They were
just trying to get her on to this Introspection Rundown, but
she wasnít able to do any auditing and therefore they couldnít
even start her on it, on this thing. So one of the interesting
aspects of that is that the Church of Scientology tried to get
the court to rule that Scientology was a religion. The court
said, you know, "Well, what does that have to do with anything?
We donít wanna--itís not our issue to, to decide whether youíre
a religion." And basically Mr. Dandar in the civil case has
gone, you know, very hard on this with the help of attorneys in
California to basically say that if she wasnít getting any
religious services, what does the issue of religion have at all
to do with this case? And I think that that will--the judge has
seen that that is not a factor here and has declined to rule on
that issue at all.

STEVE HASSAN: Okay. See if can use this mike here--

BOB MINTON: Sure.

STEVE HASSAN: Iím not gonna read the entire question because
itís very long, but itís what, what can you offer to a family
whose son is in a one-on-one domination relationship and such,
and the family has tried a lot of different things. Well, one
of the--one of the hallmarks of, of my approach that Iím, um,
promoting is keeping a [???] approach is create a team of
concerned people, whether itís other siblings, cousins, former
high school coaches, ministers, whoever, that cares about the
person, and educate them and encourage them to create a
relationship or start up a relationship again with the
individual. Sometimes, especially in small groups or one-on-one
groups, uh, the whole family is cut off, but if there was a
former co-worker or, or a friend or whatever, I mean, itís not
perceiving to be attacking the relationship, something can take
place. Um, I try to think very practically about what little
steps can be taken to move forward to the goal, and the goal is
to help empower people to have a choice and to, to grow and to
learn. And, um, sometimes in protracted, in protracted cases,
there are protracted cases that go on and on and there seems to
be no movement, any movement was some movement. And Iíve
actually suggested in some cases for a family member or a
friend to approach whoever it is being the influence, whoever
is the dominator or the controller, and ask for their help. Um,
which is, you know, shocking, because theyíre the ones who are
creating the problem. However, typically the person who is
doing, doing the controlling, they think theyíre righteous in
their control; they think theyíre justified in their control.
And so if, if an approach is made, again it has to be done
strategically but if an approach is made to say, "Hey, I know
you care about him or her, help us. The family is having
counseling, please come to the family counseling. Letís create
a dialogue". Something that moves the case forward as opposed
to just doing nothing and hoping. The other side of it is is
what, thereís call for action and you are intent of being
someone who never had a cult problem yourself but you saw the,
the destruction--

BOB MINTON: Iíve got one down in mind (laughter)

STEVE HASSAN: But, I saw the destruction, Iíve gotta do
something about this and I can do something about it and
therefore I will do something about it. Every cult member you
ever meet is somebodyís son or daughter, is somebodyís brother
or sister. Somewhere. And some family somewhere else in the
world, maybe itís, uh, a Japanese family whose loved one was
shipped over to the U.S. 20 years ago and, uh, and theyíre now
inviting you to come to a Unification event--theyíre somebodyís
daughter. And you have a chance to talk to them at
least--whatever moment you have, make a connection, let them
know that the outside world isnít evil and everyone isnít
against them, and talk with them and ask them about them, what
they want and what their hopes and their dreams are. And, and
do something that can create a bridge. And Iím hoping also for
those families who are, donít know where their kids are and
they havenít for years--with the Internet we can post pictures
and we can keep our eye out; especially some, some of these
cults where their names are changed and they disappear, the
Garbage Eaters and such, the Jim Roberts group. We can try to
create networks of people who are concerned, that are willing
to make an effort to reach out and help. Those are a few
problems [???].